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Valerina Calls WONDERFALLS
SPOILER ALERT !!
Those hoping Fox’s “Tru Calling” (starring gamine “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” vet Eliza Dushku) will help fill the void left by the absence of fresh “Buffy” episodes this season are barking up the wrong tree. “Tru” is an unfocused mess, listless, derivative, poorly presented and teeming with legions of cardboard characters many will find impossible to embrace.
The Fox show to which “Buffy” fans should be looking forward is “Wonderfalls,” a hugely entertaining comedy-drama-fantasy which benefits immeasurably from affecting, genuinely engaging characters and some of the smartest, most pointed comic dialogue you’re likely to hear next year. Yes, next year – for, sadly, the netlet won’t be unleashing this gem till midseason.
Who is “Valerina”? She’s the one who’s seen most of the new network pilots, including this season’s new show to beat.
Who is “Valerina”? She’s the one who’s seen most of the new network pilots, including this season’s new show to beat.
Hey Herc,
Literally just finished watching the pilot of Wonderfalls and wanted to let you know how it was. Having subjected myself to most of the pilots for the upcoming season I say without hesitation that Wonderfalls is the best new show. After lamenting Team Angel's loss of Tim Minear all summer I now understand it was all for the best. [Minear left “Angel” to join “Wonderfalls.” – Herc]
This gets just a little spoilery. Fans of Buffy, Angel, Gilmore Girls, and the quirkier eps of The X-Files will love Wonderfalls. The dialogue is quick, snappy, snarky, and smart. One of the best features of the pilot is that it does not feel dumbed down for the audience. The actors are, for the most part, unknown which really helps in creating these new characters. The characters are really well-written and after only a few scenes you already feel as if you understand Jaye's (the main character) family--her upper-class parents embarrassed by her, her older, more popular and more successful sister, and her brother who couldn't care less (such a non-entity that he's only in one scene).
Although the plot (a girl is talked to by inanimate objects) is similar to the dreadful Tru Calling and the even more horrendous Joan of Arcadia, Wonderfalls does it the best. There is none of the forced gravity of Tru Callingat one point Jaye asks a clay lion if it's God or Satan. She doesn't get an answer which I felt really adds to the enjoyment of the show.
Anyway, I didn't want to give too much away, but I wanted to assure
anyone who's wondered that this show will be worth watching, whenever the hell Fox decides to get it on the air. Perhaps they thought that Tru Calling, with a more marketable star in Eliza Dushku, was a better risk to put on air, but it has nothing on the quality and pure entertainment that Wonderfalls provides. Where else can you get a 24-year old ivy league graduate living in a trailer park and working in retail, her doctor father concerned with how long it's been since she's last had an orgasm, lesbians, a newlywed wife going down on the hotel bellboy, talking stuffed animals, and an emergency tracheotomy done with a medium point BIC pen? Yeah, exactly.
Feel free to use this or not...if you do, just call me Valerina.
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Sep 07, 2003 5:33:55 AM CDT
Well we all know FOX.. Show will be cancelled. They're not inter
by krims0nknite
Showtime's Dead Like Me is my favorite show at the moment. It's just got so much humor and charm, strange incidents, and very grief-stricken moments all in the same episode. I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned on this site.
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I want a Faith spin off as badly as anyone, but slamming Tru Calling every chance you get only makes you seem bitter, and it won't serve to get the show shit-canned any faster. Just take a deep breath and hope for the best... don't make COAX a bully pulpit like those jack offs at Filmthreat have.
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I have mixed emotions about "Tru Calling" like many people. I am not willing to bash it completely, even though I am a DIE HARD Buffy and Angel fan like a lot people at this site. Sure, if I got to hang out with Eliza, I would have begged her to do a Faith spinoff working with Minear and Whedon over something else, however, I have also heard GOOD things from tru Calling and the premise sounds like a Quantum Leap/Six Feet Under corr which is very interesting. I for one will give it a chance because you never know. And who knows, for those of us Dushku fans who like her anywhere, even if "Calling" gets canceled, there's NO guaranty that she does a Faith show next Fall--more likely, as a hot, edgy, young female star, she may go back full time to film. I would rather have a Eliza on TV that not at all, particularly with a premise that has a sci fi cool edge to it.
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Sep 07, 2003 12:49:58 PM CDT
Hard to Get excited about new shows, knowing i will fall in love
by grendelprimejm
Every new season shows so much promise, but then once I find the three or four shows I may want to watch on a regular basis, they pull the plug. If it is on Fox, related at all to the the sci-fi genre, and doesnt start with X-File and end in s the it just doesnt last any length of time.
Dark Angel lasts two seasons, and Firefly (My favorite show in a long time) doesnt even get a full season. I mean I got my mother-in-law to watch Firefly, she doesn't like sci-fi, but she loved this because it was just an amazing show.
On a positive note, in a sea of re-runs and a very short summer season of Stargate SG-1, there is Showtime's DEAD LIKE ME. My wife and I love this show. So if you haven't had a chance to watch an episode yet, give it a try. -
Sep 07, 2003 2:42:54 PM CDT
Tru Calling and the lovely Eliza Dushku--Case File 68
by bodie twisselman
Twisselman's the name. Bodie Twisselman. I'm new to this gig but not to detective work. Business had been slower than the sweat drop running down my back into the crack of my nether regions when she walked into my office. She, of course, being Eliza. "I need you to find someone for me," says she. I allowed as how she had come to the right place. Her lashes came down over her eyes a couple of times, and that was it: I'd swallowed the bait; had been hooked, fished, netted; but not gutted: that would come later. Eliza probably has the most fellatio-friendly eyes I've ever seen..except maybe Evan Rachel Wood, but that's another story and another case. "Can do, m'lady," sez I, in a jaunty tone; for missing persons is my specialty--finding them, that is, not contributing to their absence. "Whom might I be finding?" "An audience," she replies, tossing her hair and throwing one leg up onto my cluttered desk, ostensibly to adjust the buckle on her sandal but more likely, I suspect, to show off her French pedicure. (I was on my way to gutted at this point.) "An audience," she goes on, "for my new show Tru Calling, which seems to be getting bashed my someone calling himself Hercules. Millions of visitors to the AICN website read his words and beleive them to be the words of God Himself. Well, maybe that's overstating, but they tend to go along with a lot of what he writes. He's driving my audience away, and I need them found. Got a light?" she demanded, the ciggy already between her lips. As it happens, I do not smoke; but I was able to catch the sunlight through a nearby magnifying glass and light her smoke up in that way: a trick I learned from Toy Story. She seemed impressed. "I can find your audience," I assured her, which seemed to impress her even more. "Most of them were in a room at the San Diego Comic Convention attending your panel. It's just a matter of tracking them down and forcing them to watch at least the first two shows." Said she: "Please assure them that Tru WILL have a car in the second episode, and will not be running all over the place like a faux-Lola or something." Now, the only Lola I know of is the one in that Kinks song, who if memory serves turned out to be a man or a hermaphrodite or something along those lines; still, I was quite sure that was not the Lola to which my new client referred. So I said, "It's all good," which though foreign-sounding to me, acted like a talisman on Eliza herself; and she beamed like a girl who'd received her first tongue-piercing. "Awesome! Thank you, sweetie!" she exclaimed, and with that, whirled and left my office as quickly as she'd come in, before we even had a chance to talk about my fee. But I suspect that will come later...as will my eventual gutting, and the eventual crushing of my heart like an overripe hothouse tomato. Yes, that will come later. But now...I have a case to crack.
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I just saw the pilot for this show and I've got to say it's one of the most interesting and entertaining shows I've ever seen. The writing is sharp, funny and poignant -- I especially enjoyed the running allusion to the 'One Froggy Evening' cartoon. And, wonder of wonders, the acting is on a par with the writing -- it is absolutely brilliant. And considering that the writers and actors are all relatively unknown (at least to me anyway), the people running this show (Tim Minear?) have done a remarkable job of finding and assembling a world-class team of talent. Make no mistake, this is truly appointment, schedule-your-life-around television folks. And this is why I'm probably not going to watch it. If Fox considers what is probably the best television show to come around in years a mid-season replacement, you know Fox will fuck up this series the way they've fucked up so many others. I'm not going to get invested in a new show only to watch the retards at Fox cancel it after the first season. Too bad really -- I can't remember when I've been so excited about a TV show.
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For what it's worth, I saw this pilot as well. It is very similar in tone to Dead Like Me, as well it should be - both series were created by former Voyager writer Bryan Fuller. He left that show to work on this one. Here is to hoping fox dosen't put it in a crappy timeslot when they finally get around to airing it, as it is really the best major network pilot of the year.
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and buffy of course. WHYYYYYY must we wait?
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I think we should do more for the shows we love. When a show struggles in the ratings and is still a good show, it is our responsibility as ambassadors of quality programming to get others to like it too. Get off your ass and promote good television!
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Do you work for the production of Tru Calling, because if so, the very sad promotional materials your team has cobbled together for this show make it look very lame. I'm not watching it based on that. And now I am definitely not watching Tru Calling due to your very poor attempt at film noir satire. As you can see, my not watching Tru Calling has nothing to do with Herc's site, it has to do with your obvious lack of intelligence and wit which I'm sure could also be said for Tru Calling.
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I've started a petition asking Eliza Dushku to a Faith TV series if Tru Calling is cancelled.
http://www.petitiononline.com/ftvs/petition.html
If you would watch a Faith series, could you please sign it?
The petition is not asking for Tru Calling to be cancelled. It's merely asking for Eliza to reconsider doing a Faith spin-off.
Since Tru Calling is up against Friends and Survivor, and the reviews have been so bad, the future of the show looks really grim.
Eliza deserves to be in a better show than Tru Calling. The idea might have been good, but the execution has been horrible.
I hope that this petition shows how much everyone wants to see a TV show with Eliza and how much everyone wants a Faith TV series.
http://www.petitiononline.com/ftvs/petition.html
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It's just too bad that Eliza didn't agree to do the Faith spin-off in the first place, then Tim Minear would be working on FTVS rather than Wonderfalls. It's all about the quality of the writing. Tru Calling's executive producer and writer Jon Feldman is a hack. American Dreams is a terribly written show and all of the episodes of Roswell he has written were very weak. The press releases for Tru Calling make it out that Jon Feldman created Roswell, but he didn't. It's like Drew Greenberg from Buffy writing a pilot and getting credited for creating Buffy and Angel. And Drew Greenberg is a much better writer than Jon Feldman.
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and, in fact, actually pretty ambivilent about such a series, for these reasons:
***** 1) Eliza Dushku is plenty hot, and she did a fine job playing a key recurring character on -
Sep 07, 2003 10:27:17 PM CDT
Bryan Fuller on Dead Like Me and Wondefalls and Voyager...
by electric_monk
Bryan Fuller, the boyish, 33 year-old former Star Trek writer, recently talked to Starlog magazine about his two new show TV shows, Showtimes Dead Like Me and the up coming FOX mid season show Wonderfalls and his four year stint on both Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Dead like Me follows an 18-year-old girl who dies when a piece of the MIR space station falls from the sky and hits her on the head. Darkly comic and quirky, the show follows George as she helps in catching the souls of people moments before they're destined to die. Fuller departed the series early on, however, working on only the first quarter of the season. "We had creative differences," he says. "about how the series should go. The studio and the network wanted it to be more like Touched by an Angel, and I didn't, so I was replaced. It was bummer, but I would rather have them kill my baby than have me kill my baby." He appears to be more positive with Wonderfalls, which he co-created with Emmy winning director Todd Holland (Malcolm in the Middle), which has been described by its openly gay creators as Touched by a Crazy Person. Wonderfalls revolves around a Niagara Falls souvenir shop worker, played by Caroline Dhavernas, whose life is forever changed when she has a nervous breakdown and finds that inanimate animal figures--plush toys, ceramic figurines, cartoon characters, etc.--are communicating with her. The cryptic messages she receives from her not-so-furry friends lead her to endeavor to help those in need. Fuller adds, "They tell her to set little events into motion, which appear to result in catastrophe, but out of that catastrophe, good things happen." Is she crazy, deranged or is God talking to her? "The basic premise is about this young person who finds out she's a pawn in the universe's plan." While Fuller is grateful for what the Star Trek universe has done for his career, he admits there were some critical flaws with Voyager (flaws that appear to happening to all over again with Enterprise). He said that working on DS9 and Voyager where two different experiences, "DS9 was much more serialized and character oriented than Voyager. Voyager explored the same facets of the same characters, and that was because of its layout. There was an active resistance on the part of the producers and the studio to any sort of serialized storytelling. So there was a magical, candy-like reset button at the end of every episode. You didn't really see how the characters grew from any given situation." The exception, Fuller admits, was Seven of Nine and the Doctor -both characters that explored humanity to its fullest, and who were his favorite characters to write for. "They kept growing. Although Janeway struggled with her command, you still knew that she was a risk taker and would do what she had to do. You knew that. And Tuvok, within an episode, would change. But by the end, he would settle back down to who he was. That's no much fun. It's not fun for the audience, and it's not fun for the creators. You keep getting caught in the same loop."
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Kind of pathetic, eh? YOU try being a private dick with a handle like this. And to answer your query, I have nothing to do with the production of this show everyone seems so violently opposed to (yet so many of these same intelligent specimens will enrich their life by staring at so called "reality" shows...all the proof we need, I think, that the cockroaches deserve to take over the planet...but that's another story, and another case). No, my good man/woman/boy/girl or whatever you are...having seen the pilot of Tru, and having compared it to most of what passes for entertainment today, I just believe it deserves a chance, that's all. (Also, Ms. Dushku promised me a wrestling match in lime Jello if I plugged it, and I didn't have the heart to refuse her.) Thanks for writing! Now...I have a case to crack.
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Joss may be busy with the Firefly movie, but he still has a contract with Fox to make television shows . Since Universal is producing the Firefly movie, not Fox, and Fox isn't going to be happy paying Joss millions to make movies for Universal. Joss' contract with Fox isn't up until 2005, and if Angel isn't renewed for Season 6 I doubt Fox will pay Joss millions to sit on his butt.
It would be better if Joss didn't have a hands on role with a Faith series. He may have the creative ideas, but Firefly showed he isn't able to convert those ideas into a series. It took David Greenwalt to make Buffy into the show it became. A Faith series with Tim Minear or David Greenwalt, Doug Petrie, David Fury and Drew Goddard with creative imput from Joss would work better than a Joss led series.
UPN doesn't have the rights for a Buffy spin-off and shouldn't get the Buffy spin-off. It belongs on the WB. The WB wants a show with a hot chick kicking arse, but Birds of Prey bombed and Fearless will probably follow suit. A Faith series is exactly what the WB is looking for. The WB would be drooling over getting a Eliza Dushku series. -
Is it just me or is this one of the lamest new batch of shows to start a season in a while? Last year was painful because there WERE some good shows, but they died horribly. This time, the new stuff looks bland and tired. If 'Falls has a shot at being good I'll take a look, but after last year I won't expect much, and maybe next year I won't even bother. ************** Herc, I don't agree with your reasons at all for why a Faith show wouldn't/shouldn't happen. Dushku does have the talent to work at the center of an ensemble. She needs people to act off of, but you know in hind sight so did Gellar. Seems like they isolated her more and more in this last season, and without the old comraderie that was a big part of what made the show such a let down in its final hours. I'm curious to know, is the substandard last year of Buffy the reason why you've soured on a Faith show now? You seemed excited by the idea back when Dark Angel premiered and you noted the similarities between Max and Faith as good solid bonuses. The primary reason that DA failed was A--Jessica Alba had like two and a half facial expressions, definately not a vice of Dushku's, and B--the writers botched the chemistry of the characters by putting Logan in the wheelchair, sticking Max with uninteresting friends played by uninteresting actors, and then failing to take the main arc anywhere interesting. The whole thing lacked vision. All the imagination was used up in the pilot, after that it was ho hum city. It could have been a post-apocolyptic epic of a show, the Fugitive meets the 6 Million Dollar Man meets Akira! But no, they bombed it with a lame "hey, that's Canada" location and a limp premise that was seriously missing a central conflict/nemesis. Anyway, back to Faith. At the very least they can learn from Dark Angel's mistake (the road picture set up helps a lot in my view). But I admit, a Faith show is at least a year away, maybe more, and that's IF Tru Calling dies within a window for Whedon, Minear, and Mutant Enemy to snap her up while making the Firefly movie, and IF she has the sense to take it. I just really think it would be different enough from Buffy and Angel both to be worth our support as fans.
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God! I HATE Buffy! Why do Buffy fans insist on having every character on the show spin-off into their own show? Even Trekkies didn't scream and beg for that! I never heard them crying for a "Worf" series, or "The Adventures of Data", or "Dammit Jim, it's Dr. McCoy!" or "Imzadi: Riker Loves Troi" or even "Sulu & Checkov Cruise With The Tholians" ---So why all the Buffy spin-off bullshit? Who wants spin-offs? They usually suck, except for most of the shows spun-off from "All In The Family", but that was 30 years ago! Next you guys will want a Firefly spin-off: "Rootin' Tootin' Space Cowboys" or some stupid shit. GET OVER IT! Buffy is done. It sucked, it couldn't carry itself past a few seasons, it couldn't maintain life on one network, and it was full of the worst cast of "teen" actors since "Saved By The Bell" -NO MORE FRICKIN' SPIN-OFFS!
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Sep 08, 2003 1:25:28 PM CDT
And by the way: Eliza Dushku is an unatractive biotch.
by sherlock_holmes_
She's NOT very pretty. She's just bitchy and slutty.
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...I must respectfully disagree on the subject of Eliza. However, I wholeheartedly share your view on spinoffs (the Dammit Jim It's Dr. McCoy title was inspired); and though I confess to having seen the FILM that launched the show, I never watched a single episode of Stuffy the Vampire Slayer. Any real vampire would have used her as an appetizer for the main course...I've run across more than a few in my travels, but that's another story and another case...
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If Tru Calling bombs Eliza Dushku could take the brunt of the blame... at least in the eyes of those who would give the greenlight to a Faith the Slayer series. Why give her the lead spot in a show after her last one just bombed? Perhaps Eliza should have went with the Faith series BEFORE trying a new character in a new series. It's probably too late for a Faith series now. But who knows, Tru Calling could be one of those very poor quality shows that draws big numbers.... like Smallville. -mattro
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What part of her body are you looking at, Herc? BTW, that Faith the Vampire Slayer petition is bullshit. Anyone want to sign my ELIZA NUDE SCENE petition? She said that she doesn't want to do 'em, but hey, what do we care about what slebs want. They're just there for us to order around at our pleasure, am I right? And I'm sure that when Eliza sees how many online mofos want to see her boobies, then she'll agree straight away. Sheez.
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I dont see it on any of the schedules
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